The SCMR was one of the first migration research centres established in Europe and brings together a large community of migration scholars as well as a dynamic and engaged post-graduate community. True to the University of Sussex tradition, the SCMR has a creative, genuinely interdisciplinary, and global approach to research and teaching.
Our migration staff lead on many projects and collaborations involving partners not only in Europe and North America, but also in Africa and Asia. For example, the Migrating out of Poverty Consortium focuses on internal and regional migration and poverty in Africa and Asia, while our Sussex-Mahidol Migration Partnership (SMMP) fosters research collaborations on migration between Europe and Thailand, and has generated institutional links with Mahidol University, NUS Singapore, and CUHK Hong Kong. Closer to home, SCMR scholars have played a leading role in the advancement of migration research and collaborations in Europe over the last thirty years.
More than 100 faculty are affiliated to the SCMR, where the centre is one of the few designated University Research Centres at Sussex. This underlines the disciplinary breadth of our members, who come from sociology, human geography, politics, anthropology, international development, psychology, education, media and cultural studies, and law.
The SCMR’s interdisciplinary and global approach is also well reflected in our postgraduate teaching. Sussex established the UK’s first Migration Studies MA and PhD programmes back in 1997. From its very outset, we offered students the opportunity to select courses from a wide portfolio of the departments and disciplines. This interdisciplinarity sets us apart from universities where migration is taught along disciplinary boundaries and it enables our students to build up an understanding of how the many components of the migration process relate to one another. Alongside our longstanding and popular Migration Studies MA programme, we added a new Migration and Global Development MA in 2017, to acknowledge the growing research and importance of South to South as well as South to North migration. This also allow us to build directly on Sussex’ longstanding expertise in development, recognised by Sussex being regularly ranked First in the world for Development Studies by the QS World University Rankings. Today, we have more than 90 students enrolled in our postgraduate programmes who play an active role in our community.
A key asset is the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS). Established almost 50 years ago, JEMS has been hosted and edited by SCMR staff since the 1990s. Under the Editorship of SCMR Director Paul Statham, JEMS has become the largest journal in migration, publishing 16 issues per annum. In the 2017 impact factor rankings, JEMS was first in “Ethnic Studies”. The journal helps support numerous SCMR activities including our annual international SCMR-JEMS conference; post-graduate conferences; public outreach events and art festivals, and a high-profile seminar series.
Finally, many of our staff and postgraduates play a strong advocacy role in the local community.
Paul Statham, Director SCMR
Tahir Zaman, SCMR Deputy Director
Sarah Scuzzarello, SCMR IMISCOE Representative